2.1 – Warming up to risk

For every rupee of profit made by a trader, there must be a trader losing that rupee. As an extension of this, if there is a group of traders consistently making money, then there must be another group of traders consistently losing money. Usually, this group making money consistently is small, as opposed to the group of traders who lose money consistently.

The difference between these two groups is their understanding of Risk and their techniques of money management. Mark Douglas, in his book ‘The Disciplined Trader’, says successful trading is 80% money management and 20% strategy. I could not agree more.

Money management and associated topics largely involve assessment of risk. So in this sense, understanding risk and its many forms become essential at this point. For this reason, let us break down risk to its elementary form to get a better understanding of risk.

The usual layman definition of risk in the context of the stock market is the ‘probability of losing money’. When you transact in the markets, you are exposed to risk, which means you can (possibly) lose money. For example, when you buy the stock of a company, whether you like it or not, you are exposed to risk. Further, at a very high level, risk can be broken down into two types – Systematic Risk and Unsystematic Risk. You are automatically exposed to both these categories of risks when you own a stock.

Think about it, why do you stand to lose money? Or in other words, what can drag the stock price down? Many reasons as you can imagine, but let me list down a few –

Deteriorating business prospects

Declining business margins

Management misconduct

Competition eating margins

All these represent a form of risk. In fact, there could be many other similar reasons and this list can go on. However, if you notice, there is one thing common to all these risks – they are all risks specific to the company. For example, imagine you have an investable capital of Rs.1,00,000/-. You decide to invest this money in HCL Technologies Limited. A few months later HCL declares that their revenues have declined. Quite obviously HCL stock price will also decline. Which means you will lose money on your investment. However, this news will not impact HCL’s competitor’s stock price (Mindtree or Wipro). Likewise, if HCL’s management is guilty of any misconduct, then HCL’s stock price will go down and not its competitors. Clearly, these risks are specific to this one company alone and not its peers.

Let me elaborate on this – I’m not sure how many of you were trading the markets when the ‘Satyam scam’ broke out on the morning of 7th January 2009. I certainly was, and I remember the day very well. Satyam Computers Limited had been cooking its books, inflating numbers, mishandling funds, and misleading its investors for many years. The numbers shown were way above the actual, myriads of internal party transactions; all these resulting in inflated stock prices. The bubble finally burst, when the then Chairman, Mr.Ramalinga Raju made a bold confession of this heinous financial crime via a letter addressed to the investors, stakeholders, clients, employees, and exchanges. You have to give him credit for taking such a huge step; I guess it takes a massive amount of courage to own up to such a crime, especially when you are fully aware of the esnuing consequences.

Anyway, I remember watching this in utter disbelief – Udayan Mukherjee read out this super explosive letter, live on TV, as the stock price dropped like a stone would drop off a cliff. This, for me, was one of the most spine-chilling moments in the market, watch the video here –

I want you to notice few things in the above video –

The rate at which the stock price drops (btw, the stock price continued to drop to as low as 8 or 7)

If you manage to spot the scrolling ticker, notice how the other stocks are NOT reacting to Satyam’s big revelation

Notice the drop in the indices (Sensex and Nifty), they do not drop as much as that of Satyam.

The point here is simple – the drop in stock price can be attributed completely to the events unfolding in the company. Other external factors do not have any influence on the price drop. Rather, a better way of placing this would be – at that given point, the drop in stock price can only be attributable to company specific factors or internal factors. The risk of losing money owing to company specific reasons (or internal reasons) is often termed as “Unsystematic Risk”.

Unsystematic risk can be diversified, meaning instead of investing all the money in one company, you can choose to invest in 2-3 different companies (preferably from different sectors). This is called ‘diversification’. When you diversify your investments, unsystematic risk drastically reduces. Going back to the above example, imagine instead of buying HCL for the entire capital, you decide to buy HCL for Rs.50,000/- and maybe Karnataka Bank Limited for the other Rs.50,000/-, in such circumstances, even if HCL stock price declines (owing to the unsystematic risk) the damage is only on half of the investment as the other half is invested in a different company. In fact, instead of just two stocks, you can have a 5 or 10 or maybe 20 stock portfolio. The higher the number of stocks in your portfolio, higher the diversification, and therefore lesser the unsystematic risk.

This leads us to a very important question – how many stocks should a good portfolio have so that the unsystematic risk is completely diversified. Research has it that up to 21 stocks in the portfolio will have the required necessary diversification effect and anything beyond 21 stocks may not help much in diversification. I personally own about 15 stocks in my equity portfolio.

The graph below should give you a fair sense of how diversification works –

As you can notice from the graph above, the unsystematic risk drastically reduces when you diversify and add more stocks. However after about 20 stocks, the unsystematic risk is not really diversifiable, this is evident as the graph starts to flatten out after 20 stocks. In fact, the risk that remains even after diversification is called the “Systematic Risk”.

Systematic risk is the risk that is common to all stocks in the markets. Systematic risk arises out of common market factors such as the macroeconomic landscape, political situation, geographical stability, monetary framework etc. A few specific systematic risks which can drag the stock prices down are:–

De-growth in GDP

Interest rate tightening

Inflation

Fiscal deficit

Geopolitical risk

The list, as usual, can go on but I suppose you get a fair idea of what constitutes a systematic risk. Systematic risk affects all stocks. Assuming, you have a well diversified 20 stocks portfolio, a de-growth in GDP will indiscriminately affect all the 20 stocks and hence the stock price of stocks across the board will decline. Systematic risk is inherent in the system and it cannot really be diversified. Remember, ‘unsystematic risk’ can be diversified, but systematic risk cannot be. However, systematic risk can be ‘hedged’. Hedging is a craft, a technique one would use to get rid of the systematic risk. Think of hedging as carrying an umbrella with you on a dark cloudy day. The moment, it starts pouring, you snap your umbrella out and you instantly have a cover on your head.

So when we are talking about hedging, do bear in mind that it is not the same as diversification. Many market participants confuse diversification with hedging. They are two different things. Remember, we diversify to minimise unsystematic risk and we hedge to minimise systematic risk and notice I use the word ‘minimise’ – this is to emphasise the fact that no investment/trade in the market should be ever considered safe in the markets.

Not mine, not yours.

2.2 – Expected Return

We will briefly talk about the concept of ‘Expected Return’ before we go back to the topic of Risk. It is natural for everyone to expect a return on the investments they make. The expected return on an investment is quite straight forward – the return you would expect from it. If you invest your money in Infosys and expect to generate 20% return in one year, then the expected return is just that – 20%.

Why is this important especially when it sounds like a no-brainer? Well, the ‘expected return’ plays a crucial role in finance. This is the number we plug in for various calculations – be it portfolio optimisation or a simple estimation of equity curve. So in a sense, expecting a realistic return plays a pivotal role in investment management. Anyway, more on this topic as we proceed. For now, let us stick to basics.

So continuing with the above example – if you invest Rs.50,000/- in Infy (for a year) and you expect 20% return, then the expected return on your investment is 20%. What if instead, you invest Rs.25,000/- in Infy for an expected return of 20% and Rs.25,000/- in Reliance Industries for an expected return of 15%? – What is the overall expected return here? Is it 20% or 15% or something else?

As you may have guessed, the expected return is neither 20% nor 15%. Since we made investments in 2 stocks, we are dealing with a portfolio, hence, in this case, the expected return is that of a portfolio and not the individual asset. The expected return of a portfolio can be calculated with the following formula –

E(RP) = W1R1 + W2R2 + W3R3 + ———– + WnRn

Where,

E(RP) = Expected return of the portfolio

W = Weight of investment

R = Expected return of the individual asset

In the above example, the invested is Rs.25,000/- in each, hence the weight is 50% each. Expected return is 20% and 15% across both the investment. Hence –

E(RP) = 50% * 20% + 50% * 15%

= 10% + 7.5%

= 17.5%

While we have used this across two stocks, you can literally apply this concept across any number of assets and asset classes. This is a fairly simple concept and I hope you’ve had no problem understanding this. Most importantly, you need to understand that the expected return is not ‘guaranteed’ return; rather it is just a probabilistic expectation of a return on an investment.

Now that we understand expected returns, we can build on some quantitative concepts like variance and covariance. We will discuss these topics in the next chapter.

Key takeaways from this chapter

When you buy a stock you are exposed to unsystematic and systematic risk

Unsystematic risk with respect to a stock is the risk that exists within the company

Unsystematic risk affects only the stock and not its peers

Unsystematic risk can be mitigated by simple diversification

Systematic risk is the risk prevalent in the system

Systematic risk is common across all stock

One can hedge to mitigate systematic risk

No hedge is perfect – which means there is always an element of risk present while transacting in markets

We tend to always think that Risk is synonyms with loss/negativity. While in reality we have two sides of the coin – negative risk as you have explained and there is positive risk, and both have different methods of handling, which I am sure you might cover in module further.

Sorry Maddy, I find it a challenge to structure and simplify content. Hence I tend to take time to put us stuff. Note, these are original content, NONE of the content in Varsity is plagiarized, I can assure you that. There are times when I write stuff, scrap it completely because I’m not happy with it and I rewrite. Such things consume time.

Karthik and team zerodha, you guyz are doing an awesome job putting up the best pieces of information and advice on stock markets. Eagerly waiting for all the next chapters in this and all future modules…. 🙂

great explanation sir…on that video of satyam scam while stock price falling , 5 points went up in between n held the price for sometimes !! n chart made a pattern too !! who were they buying ? what was their trading psychology….( is it investors/traders who were trying to average ) can u pls reply it gives some ideas…

It was by market participants who did not fully understand the gravity of the gravity of the situation. My guess would be traders playing for short retracement/bounce….trying to take a contrarian call.

sir, YOU and whole ZERODHA team is doing a great job ….which is priceless…. you are spending lot of time to educate others that also for free, and also replying to all the queries just amazing….. Zerodha is like ‘BJP’ , where Nithin is’Modi’ and you are ‘Arun Jaitley’……..
im just 20 years of age and i have learnt so much from you about the market…. My Belief in Trading is that “control yourself, because you cant control the market”…. You are the best Teacher i have ever seen…. Thank You so much sir……..

Hi Karthik,
Just a query, as there is way to calculate Expected Return (for Portfolio), is there way to calculate “Affordable/Bearable Loss” (depending on the Stop Loss we intend to place for each stock) on the overall portfolio?
What would be change in Expected Return figure arrived at beginning, if say I have made exit after booking loss on some of the stocks in my portfolio?

Dear Karthik, Amazing stuff…. I have read many books written by well known international authors on fundamental and technical analysis, but the way you have explained the trading concepts in your modules with case studies and very simple examples are truly amazing.

Thank you so much for the great work and dedication to help others understand and excel. It is very hard to find people like you in todays world !!!

Such a great content…….You explain every thing with an example , in a very simple language…..kudos to you……can you write on financial modeling also….I think that can really help us to understand the actual decision on which professional investors invest….thanks

First of all, let me thank you for the wonderful service and education you guys are providing to your customer. Here, I have a small suggestion, if you can put all the varsity content in kindle format that would be really helpful.

One question about diversification as explained by you and also by some expert that 15 –20 stock is best for portfolio.i have questions after reading this unsystematic risk as if we increase no of investment in more company more than 20 then if case happen like satyam then we can minimize our loss.

@trading is 80% money management and 20% strategy,
I think what Mr. Douglas mentioned in that book was, ” I sincerely feel that success in trading is 80 percent psychological
and 20 percent one’s methodology”! Isn’t psychology different from money management??

1. Sorry that i could not understand what “hedging” really is? It is mentioned that hedging is a craft like carrying umbrella. But in real terms, what is that? Does that mean, i should cancel some of the open positions in my portfolio or ??

I’d suggest you read this chapter to understand all about hedging – https://zerodha.com/varsity/chapter/hedging-futures/
For the expected return of the portfolio- you multiply the investment weight with the expected return of the asset. So if you have invested 50% of your capital in an asset which is expected to return 20%, then the effect on this asset on your overall portfolio is –
50%*20% or 0.5*0.2 =0.1 or 10%.

You have mentioned that using **Diversification** we can reduce the un-systematic risk. But as a Swing Trader ( I hope i am going to be 😛 ), how diversification is relevance to me? If i am going to trade on a daily basis and the trading period is within a week, is it practically possible to maintain 15 – 21 positions in the portfolio (Imagining going through nifty50 company charts everyday to maintain a well diversified portfolio for short period stocks looks scarrrrrry)?

Not scary if you can somehow automate your stock selection process. I used to run a swing trading portfolio few years ago – the idea was to select stocks based on momentum and hold for a month. But what helped me was the selection process was programed. I will be discussing this strategy in the Trading system’s module.